America’s relationship with the ICC is strained at best, as the U.S. government has systematically strong-armed roughly a hundred nations into signing bilateral immunity treaties that render us exempt from its prosecution. We worry that American troops and even government officials will be subject to war-crimes accusations following future military interventions. That’s not an unreasonable fear, so I’ve long supported these “interventionary prenups,” as I like to call them. There’s little incentive in serving as the world’s marshal if rounding up the bad guys gets you in legal trouble on a regular basis.
But having achieved such blanket immunity from the vast majority of states likely to be on the receiving end of a U. S. military intervention, why should America remain so aloof from the ICC? After all, the court’s purview truly extends only to lawless or rogue states that refuse, or are unable, to police their own. So far, all of the ICC’s cases have involved the very same states from which America has obtained or sought ICC immunity (by the way, virtually all these countries are found in my Non-Integrated Gap, to no surprise). The Bush administration’s stubborn stance, continued from the Clinton years, retarded the development of global case law concerning the terrorists, warlords, and dictators whom America routinely targets in this long war against violent extremism. Not surprisingly, our go-it-alone strategy undercuts our moral authority around the world. I mean, if our own judicial system can’t stomach much of this, how can we expect to win any hearts and minds abroad by mimicking the human rights abuses of the very same authoritarian regimes (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Egypt) targeted by our lawless enemies, the Salafi jihadists?
The ICC, which was set up as a permanent version of the UN-SPONSORED International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is—in many fine ways—a logical descendant of the American-designed Nuremberg war-crimes court constituted after World War II to try Nazi officials (nod to FDR’s Atlantic Charter). With more than a hundred signatory states, the ICC possesses a well-credentialed system for adjudicating and imprisoning these bad actors. What the ICC critically lacks is a credible mechanism for snatching these criminals and hauling them before the court once they’ve been indicted. Good example: The ICC has indicted Sudanese government officials of war crimes concerning the government-sanctioned ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The problem is, zero arrests so far. By definition, all the ICC’s indicted war criminals remain beyond the reach of accepted law, hiding out either in failed states or behind rogue dictatorships. Oddly enough, the United States possesses just such a mechanism in our armed forces, whose global reach allows us to snatch and grab these bad actors with relative impunity, only then to shunt them into our highly controversial alternative military judicial system.
You don’t have to be a grand strategist to see where I’m going with this: Once America gets the ICC comfortable enough with its unique “marshaling” capability, there’s no reason why this new class of combatants shouldn’t be prosecuted in this setting. Indeed, figuring out how to stitch these two systems together is only logical and inevitable.
We’ve got to rejoin the civilized world on this one.
7. HUMBLY ASK THE INCOMING PRESIDENT TO REVERSE AMERICA’S RECENT UNILATERALISM.
As someone who worked extensively throughout the national security community across the Bush administration, both inside and outside government, I am deeply struck by how the world has basically returned to its pre-9/11 correlation of forces, like a cosmic clock being reset. It’s almost as if the sum total effect of the second Bush term was an attempt to repair the damage caused by the first—mea minima culpa.
The Bush team’s policy reversals of the last two years amounted to a stunning repudiation of the first six years of George W. Bush’s presidency—Mr. Hyde subsumed within Dr. Jekyll. Where allies were previously disrespected, at the end they were viewed as essential. Where diplomacy was long eschewed, it was finally pursued with vigor. After six long years of trying to run the entire government from his base, George W. Bush finally attempted, in his final two years, to lead the entire nation. Bush’s political opponents rightfully detected weakness and regret and a last-ditch attempt to salvage legacy, while supporters pointed to a self-professed dissident leader extending a freedom agenda in his final months. Both perspectives held much truth, and therein lies an inescapable reality for the incoming president: Bush and Cheney consumed every last ounce of unilateralism afforded us by the world’s sympathy over 9/11. Simply put, that well is dry.
They say time heals all wounds. Similarly, it muddles all doctrines. When Bush entered office, transnational terrorism seemed dangerous but manageable—an “over there” challenge. Fast-forward to 2009 and tell me what’s different, other than your approach to air travel. Yes, we now know that a 9/11 is eminently possible, and we’re keenly aware of its likely engineers and where they now reside—one apartment over in northwest Pakistan. When they pull off the next one, probably in Europe, we’ll collectively head to roughly the same spot to roust them out again. Meanwhile, we’ll make reasonable efforts to bolster networks against their threats, both here and there, but the world must go on. Terrorists monopolized America’s attention for a while, but this happened nowhere else, either because other regions were used to such travails or because bigger things were happening.
At the beginning of 2001, we sensed that the Middle East was broken, with little chance of peace. Iraq and Iran were clearly dangerous, but both were considered manageable through a mix of economic and military efforts. No doubt we have many more boots on the ground today, and our cumulative sacrifice in blood and treasure is alarmingly large, but back then the Persian Gulf was seen as something primarily left to the U.S. military to handle, and so it is again today. Bush’s preemptive war became General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency becomes Central Command’s enduring challenge, along with Afghanistan and—suddenly in late 2007—Pakistan. If, in 2001, I described a Pentagon dreaming of brilliant, high-tech war with rising China but operationally engrossed by a messy, unstable, low-tech security landscape, today you’d find all the same bureaucratic tensions, exponentially expanded and increasingly fueled by a young generation of ground officers bristling for institutional reform.
The Bush administration entered office complaining that scant attention was being paid to the big pieces of international security, like Russia, China, Europe, and India. Then 9/11, triggering a fit of unilateralist pique, pushed all those great-power concerns aside as we targeted failed states and rogue regimes. Again, fast-forward to today and watch our new president focus—yet again!—on how those big pieces help us manage the little ones (sometimes not bothering to garner international permission beforehand, like Russia’s recent beatdown of Georgia). It turns out that you’d better ask the neighbors before you start draining the swamp—or assassinating people inside their borders.
Was it enough, in the end, for Bush’s second administration to repair, to some extent, the damage to America’s global standing created by his first? Yes and no. The reason I supported John Kerry in 2004 was that I felt the Bush team, while being more than up to the necessary task of resetting the rules in the wake of 9/11, was distinctly incapable of subsequently gaining much buy-in from the rest of the world. Generating such buy-in always involves trade-offs: Winning most means compromising some. I remain convinced that a Kerry administration would have propelled America far faster toward that inevitable adjustment, the very same realignment the Bush White House was finally forced to undertake, in part because the U.S. electorate turned on it and in part because the disrespect shown America by tinhorn dictators the world over simply got too embarrassing for the neocons to suffer.
So what’s been lost? Merely time and opportunity, our two most precious assets in grand strategy.
Our new president has to adjust to this enduring truth: Globalization—just like these United States—is all about connectivity, and connectivity is all about deal-making, not deal-breaking. Sometimes, as in 1776 and 1945, America is called upon to break some
old rules while making up some new ones; 2001 was such a year. But a rule set whose adhering population consists of America and America alone does not constitute an advance in our grand strategy but an abdication of our global leadership.
8. MAKE A LIST OF ALL THE GREAT POWERS WHOSE NATIONAL INTERESTS WE HAVE HARMED, AND BECOME WILLING TO MAKE CONCESSIONS TO THEM ALL.
Vice President Dick Cheney stated that the long war against radical Islamic extremism would “occupy our successors for two or three or four administrations to come.” He was right. But the Bush administration’s refusal to launch a regional security dialogue in the Middle East was dead wrong. When we don’t give all interested parties—both internally and externally—a chance to steer strategic outcomes, we simply invite their counterproductive meddling.
The Bush administration’s Big Bang strategy was designed to shake up the Middle East and set in motion transformational change. Done well (the hope going in) or done badly (today’s inescapable reality), change is still clearly unfolding. But it’s arrogance of the worst sort to expect the world’s other great powers to blindly follow America’s lead in the numerous resulting scenarios—for example, Iraq’s breakup, Iran versus Saudi Arabia in the Gulf, Iran versus Israel on nukes, Syria and Iran versus Israel in Lebanon/Palestine. America’s strategic relationships encompass only a fraction of the chessboard currently in play. We have serious influence with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and—now—Iraq. But our European allies clearly take the lead in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Turkey, whereas Russia is the primary political actor throughout Central Asia and the Caucasus—its so-called near abroad. China’s growing economic network connects it to Pakistan, a longtime ally, and Iran, its new best friend on energy. It’s also rapidly becoming, along with Turkey, a leading economic actor across the “Stans.” Finally, there are India’s long-standing ties with Iran and the Gulf States, plus Japan’s rather extreme dependence on the region’s energy.
A regional security dialogue that involves both internal and interested external players is the obvious alternative to the Bush administration’s dangerous attempt to enlarge our Iraq problem to include Syria and Iran. It should be modeled on the same “linkages” approach Henry Kissinger employed decades ago in the Cold War in Europe. In 1975, America helped create the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which in the years since has become the “primary instrument for early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management, and postconflict rehabilitation” for its fifty-six member states stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok. For the first twenty years of its existence, the OSCE was merely a conference where direct adversaries and interested third parties met continuously on issues such as human rights, political reform, and security confidence-building measures.
How important was the OSCE to the Cold War’s peaceful denouement? Without it, it’s hard to imagine figures like Poland’s Lech Walesa or the Czech Republic’s Václav Havel rising to the forefront of revolutionary political change, eventually becoming inaugural presidents of their countries’ post-Soviet governments. It’s also hard imagining the relatively successful processing of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Chortle if you must, but the Dayton Peace Accords ten years later look pretty good compared with Iraq. I know some history books say it all came down to Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Star Wars, but the locals actually involved in the Cold War’s dismantling routinely cite a host of smaller, nonheadline issues that got hammered out—month after month and year after year—in the OSCE. Granted, it’s boring stuff compared with decapitating air strikes, but it’s how the lasting victories are actually secured.
Right now there’s nothing in the Middle East that compares to the OSCE (forget about the Arab League), and as the Iraq Study Group, headed by Reagan’s old “left” hand, James Baker, argued, there should be. Yes, it would mean Washington couldn’t call all the shots, but frankly, it’s hard to argue that that would be a bad thing given our recent record. In its absence, expect more Russian complaints and meddling by the day. Also expect China to expand its own regional security policy, selectively favoring certain local dictators over our own. And by all means, feel free to call that kettle black, for what it’s worth. Meanwhile, Europe drags its heels on anything that enables another America-instigated war, and regional powers Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia wage pointless proxy struggles with one another, begetting nothing but more instability and death. The saddest thing about the antiwar chant of “Blood for oil” is that it’s mostly our blood and somebody else’s—as in, Asia’s—oil. That glaring strategic imbalance will only grow in coming years, making any unilateral approach to “fixing” the Middle East all the more untenable.
George W. Bush was right to lay a Big Bang on the Middle East’s calcified political landscape, but it’s now clear to everyone concerned that this long war is not ours alone to wage. That inescapable truth awaits the next two or three or four administrations, making it a clear focus of any grand strategy America tries to pursue.
9. MAKE DIRECT OVERTURES TO VIOLENT NONSTATE ACTORS WHENEVER POSSIBLE, EXCEPT WHEN DOING SO WOULD DAMAGE EXISTING ALLIANCES.
Inside the national security community there is the widespread assumption that all new technologies favor our superempowered enemies overwhelmingly over ourselves, leaving them to serve as the fountainhead of real innovation while we’re allegedly always in a defensive, reactive crouch. (I know, it sounds almost too stupid to write.) While it is true that criminals and other informal-economy types tend to exploit new communications technologies faster than business or the general population (i.e., the first anything usually involves pornography), there is no lasting or pervasive advantage that accrues to nefarious nonstate actors over time, as history demonstrates decade after decade. The “Wild West” stays wild for only so long.
In obvious contrast to this notion is the bias that says all new technologies favor those seeking systematic control over others—the Orwellian perspective. The reality, of course, is that each new wave of technological advance creates more freedom for individuals, not less, and more systematic capacity for self-governance and resilience, not less. Still, this worst-case bias within the national security community is quite pervasive, speaking to that cohort’s innate tendency to focus on dangers instead of opportunities.
More broadly, there is the sad tendency inside the Beltway to believe Washington runs America, and the Defense Department is the only truly capable change agent inside the United States goverment, ergo the Defense Department can be used to change the world, using the Trojan Horse of “interagency.” If that sounds like the neocon worldview that served us so badly in postwar Iraq, then you’re paying attention.
In my opinion, America should view the spread of networks through globalization’s advance as an opportunity—not a danger. The more our networks extend, the greater the transparency for our intelligence community, the more the private sector becomes the pervasive and less resisted agent of rule-set enforcement, and the more resilient communities can become—both inside globalization’s Core and throughout its Gap regions. Competition is nothing; co-optation and coevolution are everything. In the information technology sector, where I’m a senior executive, I can tell you, every player my company encounters ends up being simultaneously a client, a distributor, a supplier, a competitor, and an ally.
There is the human assumption that familiarity breeds trust and that connectivity—especially trade connectivity—breeds peace. Over the long haul, this is clearly the case in international affairs. But in the short term, especially under conditions of globalization’s rapid advance, the usual reaction from all sides is heightened nationalism. Moreover, when there is heightened connectivity between societies of different levels of modernity, we tend to see a rise in spirituality in the less advanced society as individuals there reach for religion as a way to maintain collective cultural identities that face transformation, and even extinction, because of the exposure to outside, foreign influences—globalization’s
most threatening dynamic.
In the cyberworld, this dynamic speaks to the Balkanization scenario, which, to some, signals a chaotic fragmentation that subverts the Internet’s promise of creating a global culture or village. But to others, this dynamic merely signals that the Internet will largely conform to the real world’s cultural contours—at least in the foreseeable future. It also signals that the resulting cybersphere will more likely resemble the sloppy, cultural mash-up that is the United States than any clearly demarcated civilizations—again recognizing the rising Asian quotient to that global mix. So think more Blade Runner than Mayberry R.F.D., but keep in mind the globalization of hip-hop.
Dealing with nonstate actors isn’t about diminishing their demand for superempowerment but meeting it. The unreasonable ambition of the national security community with regard to moving as far “left of boom” as possible (i.e., preventing the bomb by preventing the bomber) stems from the belief that even if root causes cannot be addressed, effective therapy can somehow be administered through “strategic communications.” Two varieties are found: (1) the Oprah-like “If they only knew us better, they’d like us more” approach, and (2) the “We’ll disinform them to death” approach. Neither is very realistic, given the tendency of believers of all stripes to self-select their sources of news and information. In other words, pissed-off individuals look for rationalizations on the Web, not conversions. Underlying these approaches is the notion that if demand can be turned off, then the pool of potential violent nonstate actors can be reduced to those already lost to an aggressive stance—in effect, the at-risk population is depopulated.
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